Tuesday, April 4, 2017

#Excerpt: THE CASTLE by Skye Warren

“Still giving orders, little virgin? Is that something you’re born with
in the St. James family, or did they teach you that along with your ABCs?”

Rage tightens a knot in my stomach. “I’m not a virgin.”

“No?” he asks, lifting a hand to my face.

I stand very still as he captures my chin between his thumb and
forefinger, torn between wanting to wrench away and wanting him to kiss me. How
can he make me feel alive when I’ve been sleepwalking for months, years? What
sick twist of fate let the hands of this man bring me pleasure?

“You made sure of that.” I mean the words to come out cold, unhurt.
Instead I sound breathless and somehow inviting. The white carpet may as well
be streaked with red. We’re both back in his bedroom, both flushed and sated
and ripped to shreds from what he’s just done.

He lifts my face, almost tender. “I put my cock into your warm little
hole. Pushed right through that thin hymen to do it. It felt like fucking
heaven to break you open.”

I’m a tuning fork in his hands, and the sound I make is pure arousal. “I
despise you.”

“You were so wet,” he says, almost thoughtful. “But some of it was
blood, wasn’t it?”

“I’m going to find a way to get my house back.”

He bends his head slightly, enough that our lips are an inch away, the
words a tickle of breath against my lips. “I got off on the slide of your blood
on my cock. I came that way, spilling salt into the fresh open wound.”

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to him, no line I wouldn’t cross in this
moment. My anger takes an unholy shape, rearing back with all the fury and fear
of a wild horse ready to trample his enemy. “And God help me, I’m going to ruin
you. The way you did my father. I’m going to break you.”

He nudges my chin higher, exposing the vulnerable line of my throat. His
mouth drops to the tender skin, a whisper of a kiss. “Do you want to make me
bleed, little virgin?”

The violence takes me by surprise. My swing is wild, aimed straight for
his face with all my strength. He catches my wrist midmotion, the abrupt stop
shooting pain down my arm. We’re frozen that way, him holding me, breathing
each other’s air.

“Don’t call me that,” I say between clenched teeth.

“Little virgin.”

“I’m not. You saw the proof of it. You paid a million dollars for it.”

“Actually,” he says, voice deceptively mild. “I paid a million dollars
to use you for a month. And as that month isn’t over yet, I think I’d like to
collect.”

Shock courses through me, singeing every angry intention. “No.”

“And as for your virginity, there are a hundred ways you haven’t been
taken. A thousand ways you haven’t been fucked. A million dollars left to
earn.”

“That money’s mine. You sent me away.”

“And yet,” he says, echoing his earlier words, “here you fucking are.
This is what you wanted. This is what you came for. Did you really think you’d
see me and walk away without my come inside you?”

My gasp sounds virginal even to myself. “Of course I did.”

He uses the hold on my wrist to drag me closer, off balance, almost
falling into him. His warmth surrounds me, along with a musk my body remembers.
Alarm bells ring more than they did this morning. A strange man could hurt me,
but Gabriel—he’s worse. My own kryptonite.

“Here’s the thing about fucking a virgin,” he whispers, breath a caress
on my temple. “You gave me your pretty little hymen, the small spill of blood.
The first feel of those walls squeezing my cock. And there’s no way to get it
back, not ever. No matter who else you fuck. Even if you settle down with some
prep-school fucker and let him climb on top of you every single night, I’ll
always be your first. You will always be my little virgin.”

The show of possession does something strange to me. It should be
offensive. It’s meant to be offensive, but the humiliation turns liquid and hot
inside my body. And the worst part is, I can’t even deny the truth. He left an
imprint inside me. I can still remember the stretch of him, the burn. The very
shape of that heavy thickness I can feel against my stomach now. And anyone who
comes after him, they’ll never quite fill the space he carved inside of me.

Skye Warren is the New York Times
bestselling author of contemporary romance such as the Chicago Underground
series. Her books have been featured in Jezebel, Buzzfeed, USA Today Happily
Ever After, Glamour, and Elle Magazine. She makes her home in Texas with her
loving family, two sweet dogs, and one evil cat.

Readsy's Best Book Blog 2017

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